Hellfire Ring “Nerfed” Already?

A fan complains about the change/bug-fix to the Hellfire Ring, and gets a reply from a Blizzard official.

Old hellfire ring was the real end game. People improve their gears and spend lots of times to collect keys and beat uber bosses on higher MP level AGAIN and AGAIN just to get a better rolled hellfire ring. So old hellfire ring was real end game. Now with this worthless hellfire ring, no reason to do these uber bosses more than once. No point/reward of uber bosses in higher MP level.

Blizzard should make the reward of hardest quest in game really EPIC, so in order to get a better roll, this is a really nice end game. With this nerfed ring, the end game is gone. I was excited to do these uber bosses and was incentive to upgrade my gear to beat these uber bosses on high MP level, now no point in infernal machine now.

There are some ways to nerf that ring, like scale that ring’s damage as your DPS, so that ring on weak players will never deal million damage. Or make that ring super difficult to get, like only M6 and above has chance to drop key, MP6 has 20% chance. Or make its damage scale with MP level. You shouldn’t simply nerf it to ground.

By nerfing hellfire ring, you destroy the real end game you once gave us in PTR ver 1. D3 lack end game again, and the whole inferno machine become pointless with the nerf of this ring. I am not looking forward to 1.05 anymore.

Lylirra: It was actually a bug fix. The ring’s proc damage was incorrectly scaling with a player’s primary stats and weapon damage, which it was never designed to do. While we agree it was pretty sweet to see your characters do millions of damage in a single hit, no other Legendary procs scale this way — and that’s intended.

The Hellfire Ring will still be valuable, though. It may not be as valuable to players who have reached Paragon 100 now that it doesn’t deal buttloads of damage when it procs, but it will still be competitive. Given the nature of how the ring is crafted, it has the opportunity to roll with some pretty incredible stats, so one of the rings you create may be BiS for you. Then again, it may not, but that’s a good reason to keep farming (if that’s your thing).

As for players who are leveling Paragon, we’re okay with Hellfire being BiS. Yes, it will help you level up faster, but even if you stack it with Leoric’s Signet and a ruby gem in your helm, reaching 100 will still take a very long time. And, as you’ve illustrated, the ring probably won’t be a “must-have” forever, at least not for everyone depending on the stats you roll.

I.E. what this guy said:

“The Hellfire Ring can still be BiS, now you just need to rolls to do so. You already have High main stat….you just need the 4 randoms to roll trifecta. It will now take a LOT of farming to get BIS hellfire ring.”

Hellfire Ring base stats.As Lylirra explained, the problem is that the “Chance to launch an explosive ball of Hellfire” part was calculating the damage incorrectly, which caused it to deal gigantic damage. Literally millions per hit.

That issue aside (see the video below) what do you guys think of the Hellfire Ring stats in general? It’s got a guaranteed huge bonus to one of the four attributes, and the 35% experience gain, and the Hellfire attack, but just those with 4 random mods is very far from guaranteeing a good item, much less a great one. Should the Hellfire Ring be guaranteed to be better?

For example, what if it granted that +170-200 bonus to 2 or 3 attributes, instead of just 1? Or what if it had guaranteed Faster Attack Speed or Critical Hit Change also? Or even just 6 random properties instead of just 4? Or would those easy fixes make it too good, where it was almost guaranteed to be the best ring you could ever get, and thus it would become a mandatory item, rather than just a special, maybe-awesome bonus?

For the sake of comparison, the Hellfire Torch charm in D2X had highly variable stats, but even with a terrible roll it was an invaluable item for any character, and could become super awesome with a great roll. The D3 Hellfire Ring, on the other hand, is more of the D3 style of legendaries — it’s got potential for greatness, but a very low likelihood of it.

What do you think of the Hellfire Ring?

2) It's okay with some random, but it should have better guaranteed quality. (37%, 759 Votes)

52 thoughts on “Hellfire Ring “Nerfed” Already?”

Not sure how long time it will take to farm these, but if it is a long time just to get one I think the stats must be guaranteed to be better than they are now. There’s 25% chance on each roll to get the stat you need and then you also would want somewhat the right affixes in the other slots. For this one to be really viable for me (except for the extra exp gained while using the ring) I would need it to have at least dexterity and crit, and then it would still lower my DPS and resistance. And to get just those two to roll I will probably have to farm loads of these. To get another good affix, like AS or resistance, I will have to be really, really lucky. Like always, people will go for the path of the least resistance to upgrade their gear. With the other changes to drops in 1.0.5 I’m quite sure this won’t be it. But I haven’t played the PTR, so I do not really know.

This whole thing is fucked. Lyl says it’s valuable? It CANT be valuable, it’s untradable. ITS WORTHLESS. Which is why it should do a shitload of damage. Millions? No. a million every few minutes? Hell yeah, maybe every 2 minutes it pops a huge AOE damage fireball that DOES scale with your weapon damage. Suddenly, kiting an annoying elite pack is suddenly awesome when your ring goes off and pops the whole pack.

Jesus.

Now it’s just a ring with +exp that you can get if you don’t want to pony up for a leorics, because that’s shitty, too. Except you know how shitty. Getting this ring repeatedly with dex and not being able to trade your 8th one that rolled dex is going to piss dudes off.

Another self-entitled whine. Blizzard gives you free content and the opportunity to test it before it is released and what happens? Whine, whine, whine, the free extra content is not powerful enough, because when it was bugged I felt like the best player ever without even having to try. Pathetic.

free content? lol you’re gonna call Actiblizzard “Paragons of Good” now? they’re so giving, from the bottom of their hearts?

we expect them to do their job, nothing more, nothing less. we have certainly more than payed for our right to “whine whine whine”. if you’re happy with sub-par products, then more power to ya. I surely wouldn’t wanna employ you even if you were the last person on Earth.

to me it seems to little effort ; maybe its alot of effort and they are just than we anticipated ; however as it is I am not eager to “delve” into because there is no substance to it.

the combat is visually pleasing. but it lacks depth mechanics and randomization. eg. Monster balance currently boils down to 2 properties ;

+% damage and +% HP

Monster dont have Resistances , Armor , or legit blocking mechanics ( all of which would add flavor and the opportunity to introduce counter mechanics into skills and affixes )

eg as of now dot effects are not affected by armor ; but you wouldnt notice because monster scale only in HP. there could be “chance to ignore armor affixes” “reduces Enemy Monster resistance” (maybe even a stacking debuffs.

and you could intertwine them again with more sophisticated passive skills. eg say a wizard passive which reads as follows ;

your attacks ignore Enemy resistance equal to ~60% of your own resistance. so say you are a crafty Arcane damage wizard and stack hoodles of Arcane resistance on top of all resistance as to increase your arcane potency as well.

things such as these would actually incentivise players to make decisions and add identity to the characters.

also what happened to applying skill while fighting ; eg i really liked Frost Orb in D2. it dealt tremendous amounts of damage ; and the difference between a player who aimed well and a player who didn’t were tremendous. i’d like to get some of that back too.

but as it is; the combat mechanics are just bland despite being flashy and with outstanding animation.

the skills are for simpletons and so is the itemization which is more akin to MMORPGs rather than an ARPG. not only is the itemization bland but its also terribly imbalanced because of its 1 blandness – eg the only way to noticeably increase a your dps is from a certain point is by stacking hoodle amounts of crit and critdmg. wether your synergy with crits is outstanding (CM wizards / Barbarian) or embarrassingly terrible ( Witch doctor / Monk)

the itemization as it exists leaves no room for alternatives or compromises. such as + %pet / follower damage + % elemental damage ( as it sometimes appears on some legs) + % skill damage of elemental school x ( as it also appears on some legs )

there would be tons of more room for ideas but Blizzard does not really care and listen when it comes to criticism towards core mechanics of the game (maybe because they are too arrogant – after all Blizzard knows best , and chaging those mechanics would be to much like admitting it was a bad idea to begin with. also the rmah seems to be a factor for all decisions they have made when it comes to the complexity and depth of underlying combat mechanics )

so yeah Monster power and infernal machine and Paragon levels would all be great ttings if i had any incentive to grind in the first place. like a good varied and specialized specc and nice specialized gear that goes with that specialized specc.

but thats not the case; most skill mechanics are either terribly underpowered or not existent which makes every build and gear composition the same ; except that you want more ,

+ 40 dex for the equivalent of 100 h playtime even though i can finish the content flawlessly already ? – nah thanks i pass and move on.

Awesome post. This lack of depth to D3’s mechanics/itemization has been the biggest turn off for me. I couldn’t so much as finish Hell because there just isn’t anything but grind beyond the first difficulty because these sorts of decisions are completely absent from the game.

It has been all too obvious how important all this is after playing TL2 which does such a great job of bringing back this approach from D2 and even expanding upon it in many ways. The number of choices for developing a powerful character and the variety of monster mechanics simply makes for a more interesting experience.

Most of the things you’re suggesting wouldn’t actually change the “playing” part of the game. You’re just adding more behind-the-scenes math. While a lot of people enjoy that, I prefer D3’s emphasis on actually using my skills in a tactical way. I think D3’s random monster properties are a HUGE step up from something boring like “immune to cold”.

i think you underestimate the possibilities and their impact. eg only adjusting %dmg and %HP on monsters as employed by blizzard is a terrible way of increasing difficulty – it leads to either of 2 scenarios.

getting instagibbed all the time without any chance to influence your own fate whatsoever. ( as it was for everyone before 1.03 )

or

not being threatened whatsoever once you pass a threshold of resistance (after 1.03 ; moreso after 1.05 )

the simple system of only increasing HP / DMG % leaves not much room for compromise in both ways. there are no diminishing return breaking points; eg resistance d2 was very noticable because of increasing returns in EHP. but in d3 pretty much everything scales very linear for both player and Monster. which makes it almost impossible to hit a sweetspot for the ratio ( challenging vs arbitrary and frustrating )

also most player who only enjoy the Action part of d3 wouldn’t really care anyway ? i mean if you really enjoy the action part of the game more than anything why would you care that you only manage mp 3 instead of mp5 because they are less comitted and specialized ?

there also is alot of potential for altering skills in ways that make them viable by virtue of scaling with an otherwise undervalued affix.

eg imagine chakram cloud deals bonus dmg equal to ~70% thorns ?

i cant emphasize enough that there are endless possibilities if you are creative and willing enough. (as developer) but i don’t see any initiative from blizzard concerning mechanics like these – this tendency alone does not bode well generally speaking and it is the main reason why the itemhunt in d3 is not as satisfying as in d2.

I don’t see myself grinding for the sake of grinding – if i grind gear i have a synergy in mind of Gear and Specc which creates something where was nothing. but thats not the case in d3- its all about gold budget and stacking the always same stats.

the only way i will return to d3 is to try out new sufficiently buffed skills.

eg for 1.05 i see myself trying out a turret based specc for dh and maybe a spectral blade / meteor wizard – because it will probably be fun for some hours – but the itemhunt aspect of the game will still be horrendous.

as i said the balance process is more akin to WoW than anything else – zero initiative or sophistication concerning mechanics. i mean just look at the balance process they are doing.

they dont tweak numbers and mechanics based on analysis or actual ingame utility – they tweak numbers and values based on popularity.

just look at WW Babas and CM Wizards. suddenly it is a problem ?

look at the monk skill One with everything – everyone uses it it suddenly is a problem and threatens diversity ? (as evidenced by multiply dev blogs) great analysis blizzard – i bet OWE for which you have to sacrifice serious amounts of itembudget is a problem; and not the fact that Monk has the least Passive skills and the most uncreative and underpowered ones to boot. lets nerf the only dime in a barrel of crap that is Monk passive skill arenal as to force diversity upon players.

I don’t think I’m underestimating anything; I think you and I simply have different priorities with games like this. The effect of the sorts of changes you’re proposing is that players would spend more time staring at spreadsheets and trying to figure out how to min/max their equipment. It’s easier to min/max your equipment in D3, and in my view that’s a good thing because it allows you to focus more on being creative with skill setups (and far too few players actually bother being creative there, and there’s plenty of room for it).

not necessarily , as i said you could attach scaling to Skills and tie them up with relatively unpopular skills.

eg. i think many defensive skills would tie in perfectly with the affix thorns.

eg stuff like caltrops / traps / sentry could all get boni based on your thorn value. that is more than just adding multiplyer on top of what already exists ; it is creating something where nothing was ; i don’t see how things such as these could possibly can possibly have a negative effect on build / gear diversity. and as with all available skills you can still tweak numbers and coefficients.

i never suggested to just pile on additional math on already existing formulae ; my suggestion is to allow players to branch out of what already exists and allow for alternatives and compromises where currently are none.

i mean you see after all an items can only have 6 affixes anyway – and players cannot circumvent that limitation. but as of now they don’t even have to because there are clearly inferior and and superior affixes for every slot. and iam also certain that every player who visits this page and has his 100 h worth of inferno knows exactly what itemslot is capable of having and wether or not affix X is with value y is good for slot Z.

what if there was an affix which ; only increased non critical damage by a % what about pet dmg % what about adding phys dmg % what about dot dmg % what about an affix or passive which converts 50% of your strength into Intelleigence + 10% bonus on that value.

if tuned right in value all these affixes would be superior choices for an Witchdoctor if these affixes could spawn say on an Ring. but they cannot. because they do not exist – so everyone looks for the same affixes on these slots – and that is why the item-hunt is not exciting

there is no specialized gear (there are minor exception – but they also have an minor impact- stuff like magus gloves , sankis axe etc)

there is only good gear and bad gear ; and the distinction is very sharp ; it makes items them self bland and the itemhunt itself frustrating.

With ring nerf the fucked up big time!!!!I am almost level 100. Farming this piece of shit is not worth the time and effort!!!! In the same time I can get a ilevel 63 ring with better stats. They had to chance to make something “legendary” and they fucked up!!!

My ability to defend Blizz seems wane more and more everyday. Its not just whine, whine, whine. Its the endgame item hunt is the most broken thing and they are, I don”t know, too scared or too dumb to fix it. I love the additional content. Who doesn’t? But as my hours go up in game [I don't play as nearly much as others], I can now see where the nerdrage comes from. The items clearly suck. I have found only a handfull of legendaries and none since 1.04 [i thought they increased the drop?]. Of the ones I have found, I only used 2. Clearly someone is finding them as the AH is full of them selling at low low prices of 100 gazillion gold. Perhaps a few more Hellfire-like items BoA as boss drops throughout the game. At least I’d have a chance to get a worthwhile item.

Another suggestion, make craftable iLvl63 items. Take the bots and scalpers down a notch. Sure they will make hundreds of them too, but if i know i can create a BiS item I will likely do that instead of feeling compelled to AH for EVERYTHING.

just because it has a guarenteed main stat does not make it a great item… its still basically just a rare with an orange skin. its not like if you didnt get that ring, you would never find a ring with your primary stat on it…. hell, you basically are forced to put your primary stat on every single item anyways. if you didnt already have a ring with a high number for your primary stat by the time you finish pandemonium event, i have no idea what you were spending your time doing.

I agree that this ring could be BS if you don’t have the right affixes on it but if you find a rare ring on a monster, you must be even more lucky to have your primary stat AND the right affixes. This ring is undoubtely better than a random rare ring.

An over-powered feature which is fun for the player ultimately being nerfed down because it was a ‘bug’ which wasn’t performing like the developer said it should be.

I honestly don’t really care about the end game. I just want a better overall experience. To me, it seems that elusive ‘end-game’ feature development will be a never-ending battle. After 4 (sometimes even fewer!) difficulties, I’m ready to start a new player already, not battle forever in an end game. I would rather they work on improving what is already there, not just continue to stack band-aid after band-aid on top of it all.

(Alert! Alert!) Yeah, yeah, this is a whiny comment. -I’m just still amazed, and disappointed, at what direction this game has been taking.

so the fact its guarenteed main stat makes it better than a rare? would you really have played for hundreds of hours, stacking your gear up in inferno, just be to able to even complete the event….. without a ring with your primary stat on it? every character ive taken to inferno has had main stat on every single piece of gear…. and i didnt need to do a ridiculous event just to find a ring with main stat.

The level of stupidity by whiners never fails to impress (or depress). Is anyone seriously upset that a farmable legendary doesn’t have a million damage proc?!? The game is not fun once you’ve broken it, so of course this had to be fixed.

I’d eagerly farm the crap out of that ring even if it just had 35% XP gain.

If it doesn’t have all resist or Life on Hit, it’s not worth for me switching it out because my rings and amulet have Resist All and Life on Hit because else I don’t survive A3 inferno even… Let alone A4.

Just look at the stats deemed mandatory by players and give this ring all those features. And more. Thát will make it an invaluable ring and not mandatory, but almost mandatory 🙂

Anyone else underwhelmed by the visual effect of the proc? In D2 the HFT fire would spring from the ground and flow like a title wave. In D3 it’s a fire ball. Sort of looks like a recolour of one of those procs on the newer legendaries.

omg i can’t do over 3 million damage with this ring anymore, that is not fair! i paid 60 daollars, i am entitled to it! give me now give me now!!!! how dare you nerf it, i want to one shot anything!!!!!

blizzard you suck how dare you!!! omg *cry cry cry* whyyyy give it back1!! it is not fair not fair.

When people are dependent on this ring as the “real endgame” I think that’s a problem. It really isn’t all that great and anyone can get it plus like the option in the poll says it should really be more like the torch in D2 where you got a really GOOD but not gamebreaking godmode boost with no loss.

Looking at the stats I personally would be hard pressed trying to decide which of my very expensive godly stat boost, crit chance, crit damage, res all rings to sub out… and to tell you the truth I would probably just end up keeping both my original rings on and doing the the infernal machine (much like whimseyshire which I still haven’t gotten around to) once as a joke.

This ring suffers the same problem as most D3 legendaries – way too variable in stats. There are only a hndful of legendaries in game that “get it.”. Skorn is one because it always rolls crit damage, socket, and primary stat. Why can’t they let you pick more mods on this ring? Like pick loh, resists, or crit in addition? With 4 random mods, you will basically never find one yourself better than rares on the ah. I can’t trade this thing – why can’t it be better? 4 random mods is too variable.

The Hellfire ring blows. Period. +Experience is a completely worthless affix. Who cares. There is no reason to re-roll. You cannot even farm the components until you are capable of turning on Monster Power, which means you will have paragon’d up just farming equipment to be able to turn MP on, unless of course you are one those that break out your wallet and pony up cash to buy equipment. Then there is the Hellfire ball. This is nothing more than a worthless gimmick unless it does any damage. Add to this 4 random affixes, you will need to farm this ring countless times to get one that is good. The only thing good about this ring is the +170-200 to a desired stat, but with this being the only good thing about the ring, again, who cares. The only time this will matter is if you get a lucky, godly, random roll.

We’re talking about a game that wants to preserve (at least a semblance of) a viable item economy without using cheats like ladder resets. If Hellfire rings were guaranteed to be better than rare rings, the rare ring economy would virtually crumble, leaving a lot of angry RMAH buyers.

The only consideration is: is a perfect Hellfire better than a perfect rare ring? I think the answer to that is pretty clearly yes, at least for everyone who isn’t Paragon 100 yet… but probably not better for virtually everyone who is. Right now, Paragon 100 isn’t a problem, but think a couple years down the road… I can see that this is Blizzard’s answer to Leoric’s Signet, but I think it’s too much of a short-term answer when a long-term one would be more appropriate.

If I was in charge, Hellfire would be a +5 random affixes ring instead of +4, and the Hellfire proc would have somewhat low damage (near or at what it does post-nerf) but would also provide a short stun effect, which would broaden the base of players interested in the Hellfire proc.

To be honest I was looking forward to the Infernal Machine, but I see now there is no point in doing it as Blizzard decides whenever it pleases to nerf whatever they want to nerf, and ignore the time, effort and money that top players are putting into this so called “end game”. There is no end game in Diablo 3 at the moment, it just looks like a lot of experimenting that Blizzard does. On top of that, they have a team of testers, so I don’t think this nerf is a bug fix. It’s the so called “balancing the game” which ruined World of Warcraft and made many top players leave that game. Same thing will happen with Diablo 3.